Category Archives: Opinion Blog

Tourism a major driver of recovery but ignored in FF manifesto – Donohoe Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport and Fine Gael General Election candidate for Dublin Central, Paschal Donohoe, has today (Friday) said that the glaring omission of a tourism section from the Fianna Fáil manifesto clearly demonstrates the Party’s blatant disregard for the […]

I was delighted to be asked to speak about the importance of investing in early childhood years today with Ministers James Reilly and Damien English and Cllr Josepha Madigan. This is an issue of huge importance to me personally as a working Mum , to Bernard as a working Dad and to working parents across […]

We need to help the high number of jobless households in Ireland which were abandoned by previous Fianna Fáil Governments. Jobless households experience high levels of deprivation and the children in these households are at much greater risk of going on to lead a life of persistent unemployment and low income – a job is […]

According to the census, 532,000 people aged 65 and over were living in Ireland in 2011. This will rise to 1.4 million in 2046. The number of people over 80 is set to nearly quadruple, from 128,000 in 2011 to 470,000 in 2046. The issues which are being raised by the ‘Earn Our Vote’ campaign […]

Early Childhood Ireland has already made a series of recommendations for the new Government to address this issue of sustainability and expansion of current capacity to deliver the promised second free preschool year. Many of these recommendations featured heavily on the floor of the childcare seminar held by Cllr. McLoughlin Healy in June 2015. Fianna […]

The latest Long Term Economic Plan wishes to abolish the USC by 2020 as part of Fine Gael’s ambition to keep the recovery going. This time five years ago, people were feeling for the first time the shock of seeing the Universal Social Charge deducted from their pay checks. The introduction of the USC by Fianna Fail was the last act of […]

A strong economy that supports people at work, can pay for the services needed for the type of just society we want. A Long Term Economic Plan needs smart public service investment with reform, to ensure new and better services. Our public services are still recovering from the impacts of Fianna Fáil’s disastrous economic policies, which led to the ban on recruitment of public servants and hit the […]